Iraq invasion in 2003 was illegitimate: Dutch probe

Forums: International Law, Iraq, Politics, War, Iraq War
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Always nice - umm, make that wry - to see the very same things you were already arguing close to seven years ago (on Abuzz still, I guess) confirmed officially ...

Quote:

The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq lacked legitimacy under international law, an independent commission probing Dutch political support for the still controversial action said Tuesday. [..]

The commission's report said the wording of UN resolution 1441 "cannot reasonably be interpreted (as the Dutch government did) as authorising individual member states to use military force to compel Iraq to comply with the Security Council's resolutions." [..]

The Dutch commission, which started its work in March last year, was set up by the government following pressure from opposition politicians and the public for a probe of claims that crucial data had been withheld from Dutch decision-makers who opted to support the US-led action. [..]

The commission also found that Dutch intelligence services did not have "any significant amount of independently sourced information" that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destructions -- the main justification used by the United States and Britain for the war. None were ever found. [..]

Last month, a former UN weapons inspector said former US president George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair shared a conviction that Hussein was a threat, blinding them to the lack of evidence justifying war and causing them to mislead the public.

An official inquiry has started in Britain, with Blair set to testify in the coming weeks on the intelligence used to make a case for war.

God, the amount of time we guys wasted on these discussion boards making these same arguments over and again, parsing the exact wording of Resolution 1441, sifting through the woefully inadequate WMD evidence Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Tony Blair and the lot were trotting out ... The number of high-level people, from Joschka Fischer to Mary Robinson to Jacques Chirac and all them, who made the same points ... and all for nought.

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@nimh,

nimh wrote:

Quote:
The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq lacked legitimacy under international law, an independent commission probing Dutch political support for the still controversial action said Tuesday. [..]

The commission's report said the wording of UN resolution 1441 "cannot reasonably be interpreted (as the Dutch government did) as authorising individual member states to use military force to compel Iraq to comply with the Security Council's resolutions." [..]

Well duh!

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@nimh,

I hear you.

Won't affect the people who still believe in it though.....it's only international, after all.

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Oh well, hell, if them Dutchmen say so . . .

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Those wacky Dutch! Always fumbling and groping around in their nether regions! Smile

(j/k)

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@nimh,

Possibly we have invaded the wrong country. Just where is this "Dutch" located?

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@Setanta,

I really hope that Setanta's post and the two postings following are attempts at some sort of sick sick humor because the alternatives are not something any sane person would want to contemplate.

Mame's thread on ******* delivery charges gets an 18 and people are all over any kind of smarmy thread, but a thread that points up the obvious, that there are some serious war criminals enjoying life and freedom, gets virtually no notice.

Quote:

Arresting Blair
Posted October 26, 2009
His bid for the EU presidency gives us the best chance we’ll ever have.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian, 26th October 2009

...

Blair has the distinction, which is a source of national pride in some quarters, of being one of the two greatest living mass murderers. That he commissioned a crime of aggression (waging an unprovoked war, described by the Nuremberg Tribunal as “the supreme international crime”(2)) looks incontestable. I will explain the case in a moment. This crime has caused the deaths, depending on whose estimate you believe, of between 100,000 and one million people(3,4). As there was no legal justification, these people were murdered. But no one has been brought to justice.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/10/26/arresting-blair/

There are umpteen threads where the gang all get together and discuss their respective sense of ethics/morality, whine about whales being killed, dissect one inanity after another but 100,000 or so innocents murdered, countless lives destroyed, untold property damage done to people who have done nothing isn't worthy of your time; they simply aren't important enough for you to step forward and say, "Enough".

Really, no really, what the **** is wrong with you people?

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@JTT,

The new phone books are here!

1 Reply

@wandeljw,

Don't trouble yourself so, Wandeljw. You could simply vote it down with one click of your mouse - out of sight, out of mind.

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@JTT,

My reaction is the same as Nimh's. The entire world knew that the reason for this invasion was other than what was stated. 36,000,000 people participating in 3,000 protests against this invasion were held all over the world between January and March of 2003 ( I read in Wikipedia).

What's wrong with me is that I'm totally disillusioned with the process. I went to Washington from North Carolina on a bus with my two kids in a caravan of hundreds if not thousands of other people that early spring. Everyone who made the effort to go to these protests obviously believed they could achieve something or at least have their voices heard. It made absolutely no difference in the end.
Just like the time I stood in the freezing rain outside the polls for four hours and when I woke up the next morning, Jesse Helms was still MY senator. I felt sick with disappointment and essentially powerless.

What are we supposed to do or say JTT that would change anything? If you could tell me, believe me, I'd do it- immediately.

1 Reply

@aidan,

Quote:

What are we supposed to do or say JTT that would change anything? If you could tell me, believe me, I'd do it- immediately.

Inform all your neighbors that the new phone books are out. Crying or Very sad

You know, Aidan, I really really don't know. It's like trying to demolish Everest with a geologist's hammer.

I was angry, I don't think I'm telling you anything new there. I'm also mightily, mightily perplexed. How can this possibly happen? How can normally moral individuals just turn away, just go on with their lives without questioning this mass murder?

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@dlowan,

Discouraging but unfortunately all too true. I only wonder why in the world the Dutch bothered in the first place with something everyone who knows or cares about the Iraq invasion has already made up their minds about and nothing any probe, investigation or anything else will have any effect on their minds whats so ever?

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@JTT,

You are of course talking about the mass murder by Saddam's government of his own people, right? I often wondered how moral people could just turn away and go on with their lives without questioning what he did and then putting an end to it.

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So explain to me the morality of killing thousands of Iraqis to save them from being killed in their thousands by the Ba'athists.

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@CoastalRat,

CoastalRat wrote:

You are of course talking about the mass murder by Saddam's government of his own people, right? I often wondered how moral people could just turn away and go on with their lives without questioning what he did and then putting an end to it.

Amazing how conservatives get all hand-wringingly weepy over the victims of Saddam Hussein's tyranny but express no concern whatsoever for the victims of the dozen or so brutal dictatorships that take equal delight in killing and torturing their own citizens. If you were so concerned about mass-murdering dictators, why aren't you advocating the invasion of Burma or the Sudan?

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@CoastalRat,

While you're answering those other two, why don't you explain the moral difference between being a bystander to a crime, and committing the crime yourself.

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Or Rwanda, for that matter, with 800,000 killed in just three months. Oh . . . wait . . . that's right . . . they were the wrong color to evoke hand-wringing . . .

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@joefromchicago,

Joe, Set,
So I'm confused. You accuse CostalRat of hypocrisy in advocating the invasion of Iraq, but not Burma, Sudan or other tyrannical nation-states. Then should I understand that you would advocate such an invasion? Or do you fall in the "bystander" category of ignoring mass murder where ever it occurs? This would include Iraq of course, in hind-sight.

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That's a pretty dense question. Speaking for myself, i was opposed to the invasion of Iraq even before it occurred, but it was known that it was likely to occur. So no, i don't advocate invading Burma or the Sudan, just as i did not advocate invading Iraq. We ain't the world's cop, you know. Given that CR made an appeal to morality in justifying the invasion of Iraq, the same appeal to morality must necessarily apply to Burma, or the Sudan, or Rwanda, because it would otherwise be hypocrisy. I suspect that Joe's attitude is similar, although, of course, he can speak well enough for himself.

1 Reply

@slkshock7,

slkshock7 wrote:

Joe, Set,
So I'm confused. You accuse CostalRat of hypocrisy in advocating the invasion of Iraq, but not Burma, Sudan or other tyrannical nation-states. Then should I understand that you would advocate such an invasion? Or do you fall in the "bystander" category of ignoring mass murder where ever it occurs? This would include Iraq of course, in hind-sight.

That's a false choice. It's not a question of either invading or ignoring. There are a number of things that a nation can do that go beyond ignoring mass murder but falling short of invading. I didn't support the invasion of Iraq, nor do I support the invasion of Burma, Sudan, North Korea, etc. etc. That doesn't mean, however, that I'm in favor of ignoring what's going on in those countries.

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Iraq invasion in 2003 was illegitimate: Dutch probe

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